Baldur's Gate 3

[GreenGoo]

Hah. And finishing it before everyone because reasons.

Minority opinion: I hate the bard class and every character in it. Just the very idea of this class annoys me.

[YellowKing]

Yeah I decided the other day I wasn't looking at class guides or "15 THINGS I WISH I HAD KNOWN ABOUT BG3!!!" videos for this one. I played the Divinity games without guides and had a blast.

[El Guapo]

I've wanted to play a wild mage in D&D for years now but never had the opportunity, so definitely doing that in BG3. I'm steeling myself in advance for inevitably having to replay a boss fight because on the last turn before I win my final spell finishing the boss off will turn into a fireball centered on my party.

[Skinypupy]

This, combined with a lack of willpower and lack of other games to play, means I bought BG3 this morning. I'll be joining you all this evening but in a more clueless manner.

I’m dialing it down to Easy difficulty (as always), avoiding class build guides, and just planning to enjoy the ride.

I will likely have to look at a walkthrough now and again though, since Larian typically refuses to put any sort of quest marker or often any indication whatsoever of where to go next in the journal. It’s one of the few things I really dislike about their games.

[malchior]

And download begins...now. Let's see if this finishes by dinner.

[Jaymann]

And download begins...now. Let's see if this finishes by dinner.

Same here. So far Steam has not crashed.

[Hamlet3145]

23 minutes to go for me.

[malchior]

Saying an hour here which is not too bad. Steam is a well-run machine.

[Max Peck]

It looks like the BG3 launch may have broken Steam. I'm getting a connection timeout when I try to download the game, which is a first for me with Steam.

Edit: I tried again just after posting that, and was able to get the download started.

[malchior]

For me this has turned into a bit of an expression of Zeno's paradox. The download has been progressively slowing so that the time between checks is consistently 1 hour.

[Hamlet3145]

Done! P.S. 3.4gb patch after download.

I now have a three hour block to play before I have to do errands. Hopefully, that will be enough time to make it past the character creation screen.

[Reemul]

I Just bought it to play on my new desktop 4070ti system which arrived on Tuesday

[coopasonic]

Just told it to download. Here's hoping it is ready to go when I get home in 6.5 hours.

[Isgrimnur]

Anyone know a company that I can have deliver a backhoe on short notice?

[coopasonic]

Anyone know a company that I can have deliver a backhoe on short notice?

[Moliere]

65 minutes to download.
Two hours to pick a race, sub race, class, sub class, hair style, backup hair style, length of fingers, and color of tattoos.

[YellowKing]

Done as well. These are the days I love having fiber.

[Blackhawk]

I tried to love Darkstone. I could not.

I had a similar experience, and this was in a time where I'd play almost anything (in other words, in the era before Steam libraries.) The context of the song:

[Hamlet3145]

I'll be playing an elfy Oath of the Ancients paladin. The rest of my main party will be Shadowheart (with her cleric domain respecced to something actually useful), Astarion (probably will multi-class to Gloom Stalker), and Gale being a nuke-y nuker.

And . . . I've already changed my mind.

Upon further consideration, for my 1st playthrough I've decided to go with a "no respec" rule so I'm swapping out Astarion for Karlach and making Shadowheart my thief-y person. She won't be as good as a real rogue, but hopefully there will be some items to help out with that later on.

And . . . they have made some changes to the origin character stats and backgrounds so I'm either going to have to keep Astarion in the party (at the exclusion of Karlach) or respec Shadowheart. (Launch Shadowheart has the acolyte background rather than urchin so no lockpicking/stealth).

Time to ponder as I go mow the lawn.

[Madmarcus]

And . . . they have made some changes to the origin character stats and backgrounds so I'm either going to have to keep Astarion in the party (at the exclusion of Karlach) or respec Shadowheart. (Launch Shadowheart has the acolyte background rather than urchin so no lockpicking/stealth).

I played the early access just long enough to get Astarion, Shadowheart, and Gale. Which was also just long enough to see that I'd be willing to have Shadowheart be my rogue-like one as I expected to ditch Astarion later. Nothing against him but a full rogue in the party bores me.

Oh well. I've already spent an hour in the character creator pondering. What's one more decision?

[Enough]

65 minutes to download.
Two hours to pick a race, sub race, class, sub class, hair style, backup hair style, length of fingers, and color of tattoos.

This is the way, lol. I am in for launch day and for the first time since maybe Civ 6 part of a launch day AAA party. Pretty stoked! Typically I have been being the patient gamer to save money and avoid bugs, but throwing caution to the wind this year. Also in for Starfield launch and I even got the Cyberpunk expansion. My gut tells me BG3 may be the only one close to ready for launch day heh. I do see some save game bugs on reddit to watch out for so you don't lose progress, arg.

[Hamlet3145]

And . . . they have made some changes to the origin character stats and backgrounds so I'm either going to have to keep Astarion in the party (at the exclusion of Karlach) or respec Shadowheart. (Launch Shadowheart has the acolyte background rather than urchin so no lockpicking/stealth).

I played the early access just long enough to get Astarion, Shadowheart, and Gale. Which was also just long enough to see that I'd be willing to have Shadowheart be my rogue-like one as I expected to ditch Astarion later. Nothing against him but a full rogue in the party bores me.

Oh well. I've already spent an hour in the character creator pondering. What's one more decision?

I think I'll multi-class Astarion to ranger (either Gloomstalker or Hunter) at lev 4 to make his build more interesting.

[malchior]

It's been in EA so long that I wasn't worried about launch day here.

[Moliere]

I had forgotten what is was like to walk around always holding the Left Alt down to make sure I don't miss any dead bodies, backpacks, plants, and other loot.

Also, funny that we're early enough in on Day 1 that the first Steam Achievement for escaping the initial ship is at 0.1% of players.

[Hamlet3145]

I had forgotten what is was like to walk around always holding the Left Alt down to make sure I don't miss any dead bodies, backpacks, plants, and other loot.

Also, funny that we're early enough in on Day 1 that the first Steam Achievement for escaping the initial ship is at 0.1% of players.

I saw that when I logged out and audibly chuckled.

[Carpet_pissr]

I had forgotten what is was like to walk around always holding the Left Alt down to make sure I don't miss any dead bodies, backpacks, plants, and other loot.

Surely there’s a toggle for that alt command like in JA3?

[malchior]

I had forgotten what is was like to walk around always holding the Left Alt down to make sure I don't miss any dead bodies, backpacks, plants, and other loot.

Surely there’s a toggle for that alt command like in JA3?

I haven't found it yet! Please let me know if there is a setting! Please!?

[Hamlet3145]

I had forgotten what is was like to walk around always holding the Left Alt down to make sure I don't miss any dead bodies, backpacks, plants, and other loot.

Surely there’s a toggle for that alt command like in JA3?

I haven't found it yet! Please let me know if there is a setting! Please!?

FYI for anyone who might care: hold down on the right stick for this on the controller. Took me a while to figure that out. Also, you can switch back and forth between the controller and mouse/keyboard fairly seemslessly. It detects which you are using then switches the interface over with a second or two of lag. While I greatly prefer the controller to point and click for moving around, mouse and keyboard is definitely better for inventory, etc.

Edit: just to be clear, the holding down the right controller button isn't a toggle. It just functions like left alt.

[Jaymann]

I had forgotten what is was like to walk around always holding the Left Alt down to make sure I don't miss any dead bodies, backpacks, plants, and other loot.

Surely there’s a toggle for that alt command like in JA3?

I haven't found it yet! Please let me know if there is a setting! Please!?

FYI for anyone who might care: hold down on the right stick for this on the controller. Took me a while to figure that out. Also, you can switch back and forth between the controller and mouse/keyboard fairly seemslessly. It detects which you are using then switches the interface over with a second or two of lag. While I greatly prefer the controller to point and click for moving around, mouse and keyboard is definitely better for inventory, etc.

Edit: just to be clear, the holding down the right controller button isn't a toggle. It just functions like left alt.

So to be clear - if I plug a controller into my PC, I can use both that and M&K? That will come in handy when I play split screen with my son.

[Jaymann]

Now deep into Act 1. In the tutorial they did make it more difficult to:

Spoiler:

Kill Commander Zhalk to get the Everburn Blade. You can no longer leave "Us" (or anyone else) at a heal station to keep healing your party. I tried leaving Shadowheart there, but she only healed herself. Also they dramatically reduced the number of exploding pots. I was still able to beat him but it took massive save scumming.

I recruited the new companion:

Spoiler:

Karlach, a Tiefling Barbarian. So far I have given her Berserker and a level of Fighter for dual wield. This is essential to me because there are so many one-handed weapons I want to use.

[Hyena]

Now deep into Act 1. In the tutorial they did make it more difficult to:

Spoiler:

Kill Commander Zhalk to get the Everburn Blade. You can no longer leave "Us" (or anyone else) at a heal station to keep healing your party. I tried leaving Shadowheart there, but she only healed herself. Also they dramatically reduced the number of exploding pots. I was still able to beat him but it took massive save scumming.

I recruited the new companion:

Spoiler:

Karlach, a Tiefling Barbarian. So far I have given her Berserker and a level of Fighter for dual wield. This is essential to me because there are so many one-handed weapons I want to use.

So a comment about your first spoiler.

Spoiler:

I always just swarmed him with my toon, Us, Shadowheart and Le'ael (sp?) and never had a problem. He always focused every attack on the mindflayer, so i was able to burn him down. The githyanki was even able to stun him a few times with pommel strike, allowing us to beat him down faster.

On a couple of occasions i was even able to take the injured mindflayer out, too, if they were wounded enough from the fight with the devil. The xp from them both is enough to bump you up to level 2 right there on the ship.

[Hamlet3145]

I had forgotten what is was like to walk around always holding the Left Alt down to make sure I don't miss any dead bodies, backpacks, plants, and other loot.

Surely there’s a toggle for that alt command like in JA3?

I haven't found it yet! Please let me know if there is a setting! Please!?

FYI for anyone who might care: hold down on the right stick for this on the controller. Took me a while to figure that out. Also, you can switch back and forth between the controller and mouse/keyboard fairly seemslessly. It detects which you are using then switches the interface over with a second or two of lag. While I greatly prefer the controller to point and click for moving around, mouse and keyboard is definitely better for inventory, etc.

Edit: just to be clear, the holding down the right controller button isn't a toggle. It just functions like left alt.

So to be clear - if I plug a controller into my PC, I can use both that and M&K? That will come in handy when I play split screen with my son.

Possibly. I haven't tried split screen.

[Skinypupy]

Anyone else running into issues with edge scrolling? Mine won’t scroll until I push one of the directional keys (WASD). Then it scrolls just fine. I have to press a direction again after every combat, conversation, or interaction.

Not a game breaker by any means, just annoying. Worked fine in the EA version.

[Jaymann]

I got a taste of the new tadpole dynamic:

Spoiler:

I killed a boss that I had previously killed in early access. When I went to loot the body I got that tadpole vibe and was forced to make a choice of accepting its power or passing a dice check to resist it. Fortunately I passed the check. From now on I will be saving prior to any boss looting.

[Carpet_pissr]

I’m sorry, what in the world is this tadpole reference I keep seeing? Ignore this if it’s something I will find out once I start playing.

Just scratching my head about how tadpoles got into the BG world.

[Hyena]

I’m sorry, what in the world is this tadpole reference I keep seeing? Ignore this if it’s something I will find out once I start playing.

Just scratching my head about how tadpoles got into the BG world.

If you're going to play, it is literally in the first opening cutscene, and boy is it worth the wait for the visual.

[Blackhawk]

It was in the first reveal trailers. You play a Jaffa, deciding whether to become a Goa'uld.

[Isgrimnur]

Mindeed

[coopasonic]

After playing the first couple hours I am starting to think XCOM used D&D to set up their to hit percentages. Dear god do the virtual dice hate me.

I am enjoying the game so far, but I am bit confused by the early difficulty. My party is up to 3 (Ranger, Cleric, Fighter) now and I am wandering into fights with 5 or 6 same level enemies and I don't see how I am supposed to succeed. Is the early temple a come back later kind of thing or am I just bad? There is an explosive barrel near the enemies that I suspect will help but not sure on the blast radius.

I will say that I am overwhelmed by the vast number of actions available for each character and I guess it will take some time to get used to deciding when to use the limited skills/spells.

[YellowKing]

It's not an easy game. I had to restart two fights so far (including the one you're talking about), but I was able to get past them.

I can't give very good advice because I don't know what the heck I'm doing, but I will say that so far I haven't been stingy with spells or abilities. I found out real quick that hoping to get by using basic attacks is a recipe for failure.

Getting out of enemy line of sight seems to be really important. Whenever possible I try to use doorways or chokepoints to force them to come to me. This can help a lot when outnumbered.